Sutton, Delaney to lead Undergraduate Assembly

The results are in.

Friday night, the Nominations and Elections Committee presented the results of the spring 2013 student government elections. College and Wharton junior Abe Sutton won the presidency uncontested, while College sophomore Gabe Delaney won a close election for vice president against Wharton sophomore Christian Cortes.

Immediately after the results were shown, Delaney jumped up and clutched his campaign team around him. “I can’t calculate how I’m feeling right now…I’m going to call my mother,” he said.

Delaney defeated Cortes by 222 points in an election with over 5,000 cast between the two candidates.

Cortes did win a seat as an UA Wharton Representative. “I’ll be working hard in the UA regardless,” he said. “Hopefully I can win a spot on Cabinet as well.”

The rest of the Undergraduate Assembly saw the election of many new freshman to the general body.

Freshman Sebastian Negron-Reichard and junior Julio German Arias, who ran a tandem campaign, won spots of the five Wharton seats. Four new freshman took the election in the race for the UA College seats, including Bill Ding, who ran in the fall of 2012 but was disqualified due to a poster violation.

This time around, there were no campaign violations, to the relief of the NEC. “You never want to disqualify a candidate, so I’m glad everything went well,” said College junior Frank Colleluori, the Nominations and Elections Committee Vice Chair for Elections.

One of the most closely contested races in the UA was actually for the Nursing seat. Sophomore Jessica McCurry beat freshman Hannah F. Victor by only one vote.

Sutton commented on the new body, “We’ve got a great team put together.”

Every incumbent in the 2016 Class Board won re-election, except for SAS Chair Nikki Moorer, who was displaced by Maddie Gee.

Only one election was contested in each of the 2015 and 2014 Class Board campaigns. 2014’s Vice President of Finances was initially uncontested but College junior Dylan Petro won candidacy as a write-in. He defeated College junior Nikolai Zapertov in the election.

Voter turnout numbers were not released at the results meeting, as the NEC Elections committee believes they can more accurately report the numbers after trying a new method of counting. “The IT staff say they might be able to report how many people voted in at least one election, which would give a more accurate depiction of voter turnout,” said Colleluori.

“Still, the numbers seem to be higher than I anticipated,” he added optimistically.

A previous version of this article stated that Delaney won by 222 votes. However, the election for vice president was measured with points not votes because it was a preferential ballot.

Additionally, Julio Arias is a junior, and not a freshman.